Why the NSA won’t be reformed anytime soon

It seems like yesterday that Edward Snowden, with the help of the guardian newspaper, published highly classified information about the NSA and it’s spying habits. The winter months are fast approaching and Snowden’s major leak came in early summer. Of course, reform wasn’t and isn’t expected to happen quickly as these sorts of things seem to take a while.

My fear is that nothing productive will be done to change the way our National Security Agency behaves. As many of you may know, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have introduced a reform bill called the USA Freedom Act. The bill would drastically reform the NSA and hopefully restore some of our privacy’s.

Just because most Americans disagree with the way NSA collects intel, that doesn’t mean Congress will act on our behalf. I, and many others, applaud Leahy and Sensenbrenner for introducing the bill. But again, I don’t think the rest of Congress is prepared to take action.

Then again, I did think that Congress would pass the Assault Weapons Ban and everyone knows how that turned out. I think before we see real change, there has to be real public outrage. More Americans need to show their discontent with the current policies.